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Topic: Milking machine for goats (Read 11876 times)

I have read some of the earlier posts regarding milking machines for goats, and I was wondering if there are some recent recommendations as to which machines are recommended for milking two goats at a time. I would prefer a portable unit that runs on electric. I am located in New York, if anyone has more local details.thanks

I milk my goats by hand, but there are a couple of goat supply places such as Hoegger's and Caprine Supply that do sell machines for milking two at a time. I have dealt with both companies over the years and they are very friendly and helpful to talk to. The two goat bucket assembly from Caprine looked interesting and was more affordable. Maybe you could find a goat dairy in your area that uses milking machines and see if they would give you some advice on what they use.

Good Luck.

Bonnie

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Better to train people and risk they leave, than do nothing and risk they stay. Anonymous

The Hoegger machine may be more expensive, but it is the easiest machine to use, particularly for clean-up. The Hoegger machine can be set up to milk one or two goats at a time. It is designed as a belly pail so there are essentially no lines to clean. The pail is small enough to fit in a kitchen dishwasher. It is designed to be machine washable, making it much more user friendly. It is also very light-weight and portable. You can view the machine here: http://www.hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=3600&cat=184&page=1

Hi, I am milking 12 does in our dairy and we LOVE the Hoeggers 2 goat machine. We started with another machine that just couldn't do the work (used). Hoeggers has awesome customer service and I would recommend this machine to anyone.For us, we have to empty the pails every 2nd goat but it's not difficult. It cleans up every well and our mandatory bacteria counts (monthly) are better than excellent.It is expensive but if you are using it twice a day, every day, the quality is worth it.Jaki

This person lives near me so I brought up my parts and he set everything up.

I bought a vac pump and had it put on wheels. It was in good condition, heavy but it does move! It is a 3/4 hp machine. That was $250 locally--didn't have to ship it!

I use the Surge belly milkers, you can probably find them on craigslist or on some old dairy farms. Here I can get them for about $35 each. You may need to buy lids and pulsators, not sure how much they are. A rebuild kit is $45 for each milker. I have the instructions to rebuild if you need them. I can copy and send them to you.

Milk line and air line can be bought at most fleet farm stores or dairy supplies.

My milkers have shut off valves on the hoses, like in the second pic on the ebay ad.

The main reason I chose this set up over the others is that it allowed me to milk more than 2 animals at a time (although my goats have not yet agreed to this set up so we are at 2 animals at a time), and I can also milk my cows and sheep on it without having to do much, just different belly milker pails for the different animals.

I am changing over to the tall bucket system until I can one day get a real dairy parlor and pipe system. In the winter it is difficult to carry the belly buckets over the snow drifts!

It is easy to clean up and all in all I have liked it. Since I had everything from the start, it cost about $500 to get the thing put together--pump on wheels, cleaned, and set up properly, all milker buckets cleaned, rebuilt pulsators, new lines, airhoses, inflations.

Tracy

PS: If you do get belly milkers, make sure you don't have the kind that have a seam in them. They can collect more dirt and yuck and are in general, not safe.

I was referred to a farmer in PA who said he got some sort of electric controller for the pulsator and sets it differently for goats. He said that although most pulsators are set for 40-60 pulses per minute (calf speed)that if you watched a kid suckle you'd see more like 90 sucks per minute. They set the pulsator for 90 /min and lower the suction down to 7 or 9. ( I can't remember which now). He says it works much better for goats to do it this way.